There’s a new name and the deli counter is gone, replaced by a breakfast and brunch menu that lovingly spruces up the classics.
After 32 years, Tognini’s is no more. The classic deli and cafe closed on Baroona Road in Milton towards the start of the year. In its place, opening this week, is Dopo Eatery.
Yet, step inside this handsomely designed little cafe with its sand-tiled treatment and curved stone communal table, and you’ll still find Narelle Tognini and husband Mark Tognini walking the floor, chatting to their old regulars.
“We needed to do a little change-up,” Narelle says. “It was time for a refresh. Things change.
“The market has changed for delis. You now have IGAs, Harris Farm. A delicatessen can’t compete in terms of volumes of sales, so it was a natural progression.”
Before you ask, yes the catering business Tognini’s is still a going concern, but Narelle gestures around her.
“The centre has undergone a redevelopment, and we’ve noticed new, younger faces moving into the area across Milton Road, in the apartments above Railway Terrace,” she says.
Dopo is carefully calibrated to appeal to both the old regulars and the younger demographic that’s been moving into the area.
This feels like a new cafe, courtesy of local design firm Blackbox. Beyond the the lighter colour palette and communal table there’s slick sconce lighting on the walls and lily pad chandeliers in the centre of the cafe, and rattan furniture throughout.
The light-filled al-fresco area out front remains – minus an imposing communal table (the newer one inside is much better) – as does a couple of waiter stations and shelving units, elegantly weaved into the new design. Otherwise, everything is change.
“We just asked Ann [Huntington, from Blackbox] to give it the feeling of community and family,” Narelle says. “We wanted that warmth and I think she’s managed that with the surfaces and the colours.”
The menu has changed also, with chef Tikeshwar Tharu creating a menu that touches up the classics.
For breakfast, you might order Turkish eggs with confit garlic labneh, crispy kale, pickled shallots and spiced chilli oil; scrambled eggs spiked with ’nduja and chilli and fried capers; heirloom tomato bruschetta with pumpkin hummus; and a rick yolk omelette served with saffron butter, bacon lardons, comté cheese and a parsley sauce.
Later in the day there’s a crab and prawn ravioli, a cacio e pepe, a buttermilk crumbed chicken burger served on focaccia, and a grilled baby gem caesar salad with crispy prosciutto and a soft poached egg.
The deli is gone, of course, but there’s a cabinet full of sandwiches and pastries for grab and go, and a back fridge stacked high with the Plenty ready-to-eat meals popular from the Tognini’s days.
For drinks, there’s still the same house blend coffee produced for the cafe by QCMS and, later in the day, a tight selection of wines that splits the difference between old world and new, and a clutch of beers.
This masthead wrote recently about full-service cafe openings becoming rarer in the post-pandemic era. In that sense, the reinvention of Tognini’s into Dopo is welcome. And the Tognini family can pull it off, given the built-in diner base.
“That loyal clientele did make it easier. We opened the doors yesterday and they just started coming again,” Narelle says. “I’d be shopping at Toowong Village and you’d see regulars, and they’d ask when we were opening again: ‘We miss you so much.’”
“Some of them come in for a coffee first thing, and then they’d breeze back for something else. Sometimes, you see people three or four times a day.”
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
